Victoria

In the margin

A proper freeze here is a quiet thing: no wind, no rain, a skin of ice on the canals and the streets more or less empty. Victoria, blonde and twenty-eight, prefers those nights to any other kind on the calendar. She arrives with her hands already warm, which sounds like a small courtesy until the first minute of a session in February. Ukrainian, Russian or English, whichever the room opens in. She sets out what she does and does not do at the beginning, and it holds for the length of the visit.

Victoria decides which bookings she takes and may decline any of them; she sets the limits for what a session includes, says what they are, and may end a visit at any point, as the terms set out.